Friday 21 March 2014

Hougomont and Nassau defenders

The chateau of Hougomont is one of the famous landmarks of the Battle of Waterloo with its distinctive red brick construction and profile.   I have gone the paper-building route and so bought the Pireme Publication building.  While in 15mm scale it is still a large complex and had too large a footprint on the tabletop for my purposes so I have heavily modified the structure but still hoping to keep the essence of its look.

A battalion of Nassau troops were deployed to occupy the woods facing the French lines.  These and some other small contingents of British Guard light companies and Hanoverian skirmishers still amounted to no more than 1,100 but I wanted for game purposes to make Hougomont a tough nut for the French to crack  -- historically it was never taken -- so I will be using a full element of these troops along with the occupying element of British Guards.

The Nassau boys - the similar other element I painted, will be deployed on the right wing with Prince Bernard - are built out of the Perry plastic French skirmishers appropriately scraping off all the Bardin lapel details. The Grenadier fur caps are French hussar caps.  I will say in sotto voce that the red bag hanging from each should be on the left side but, "button counters", let's over look that ....